


Stud

by Carbon65



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Bruce Wayne has too many children, Bruce Wayne is Trying, Canon-Typical Violence, Family Drama, Gen, Piercings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-18
Updated: 2020-05-18
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:29:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24246541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carbon65/pseuds/Carbon65
Summary: Jason wants an ear piercing. Because it's his body and he can. And because of Shakespeare. And because it will probably piss Bruce off. Mostly because it will piss Bruce off.
Relationships: Cassandra Cain & Jason Todd, Jason Todd & Bruce Wayne
Comments: 15
Kudos: 167





	Stud

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pennysparrow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pennysparrow/gifts).



> Happy Graduation!

“And, I’ll just need a parent or guardian’s signature,” The tattoo artist says, pointing to the form. “They can come in with you to sign it.” 

“I don’t have a umm… I’m…” 

Technically, Jason Peter Todd is eighteen. Sort of. He’s still not actually sure how being dead counts for age. Well, short term “died on the operating table” dead, you just keep counting from your birth date. But, six months dead and buried kind of screws up the calculation. He pulls the ID out of his wallet and shoves it across the table. It’s fake, but it’s a good fake. The kind of good fake that happens when Oracle decides she likes you again because you bring her good book recommendations.

The guy looks at it flips it over, and pushes it back. It says he’s twenty. He _is_ nineteen, right? Well, twenty less six months of being dead. And a year of being catatonic. And six months before the pit. And that makes him twenty still, right? Because he sometimes forgets and he mostly just wants to be fifteen and carefree again.  
And, something fifteen year old Jason Todd always wanted (and twenty year old Jason Todd is more convinced he wants) is an earring. 

The man who will shortly be sticking a piece of sharp metal into Jason’s body for no apparently good reason other than Jason’s need to establish his own bodily autonomy, a desire to have gold to pay the ferryman when it comes to be buried again, and the nice added bonus of pissing Bruce off, nods to the case of earings. “Take your pick.”

Jason selects a flat red stud, low profile and practical, he hopes. Something he can wear under his helmet without attracting too much attention or without it hurting. He’s thought this through and he wears a fucking helmet because unlike some of the other Bats (Dick Grayson) he knows blunt force trauma to the head is no joke. So, it shouldn’t be like the little earring will be a target to be ripped out or anything. Again, because he’s not a dumbass like some birds.

As he settles in the chair and the heavily tattooed man puts on a pair of rubber gloves, he remembers the last argument he and Bruce had about this issue. Jason had been fifteen, and about to start ninth grade at Gotham Heights. He was already nervous about starting over at a new school where anyone who had known him before he came to live with Bruce would be a year ahead, even though Bruce insisted that all the freshmen at GH would be new. Jason thought an earring would make him look cool and unapproachable. Bruce suggested that an earring would not make him look cool and unapproachable, it would make him look like a kid with irresponsible guardians who let him scar himself for life at fourteen. The irony of this statement might have been lost on Bruce, but it was not lost on Alfred. Sadly, Alfred sided with Bruce on this one.

There was another reason fourteen year old Jason wanted an earing, though. And that was Shakesphere. Jason has always loved to read, that was something that never changed before or after… or ever. His mom… Catherine Todd might have been too busy exploring the inside of a bottle or the end of a needle to understand, but stories were Jason’s lifeline. He remembers watching _Matilda_ at maybe… four or five through a half opened door while some adult dozed on the couch, at that was where he discovered the magic of the public library. And then, at Sacred Heart, they’d read Shakesphere in English, because someone told the nun teaching his class that eighth graders were too young for serious literature, and she gave them the middle finger and taught it anyway. (Jason isn’t actually sure about the middle finger being literal, but then again, Sister Charlotte might have been old, but she also sometimes told stories of her wilder days at Catholic Worker houses. When he takes time to read and think through it, when the memories aren’t entirely too painful, part of him suspects that Sister Charlotte and Dorthea Day were socialists. Or even communists. But, like, the good kind. There’s something to be said for functional socialism in Catholic Doctrine. Also for nuns who give the establishment the middle finger.) Sister Charlotte had made them read _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_ , had made Jason read Puck and once he got the iambic pentameter right, he might have fallen in love. And decided that when he grew up, he was going to be like Shakesphere, which meant getting an ear piercing.

...He’s grown since he was 15. He’s shot up almost six inches since… since he was fifteen and his shoulders have filled out. He wears shoes that are the same size as Willis’ and the very few nights he’s ended up at the manner after some run or another, someone has handed him Bruce’s sweats. He’s aware that he’s taller, but somehow, he still expects Bruce’s sweats to pool around his ankles and swallow his hands instead of fit almost perfectly. He’s grown since he was 15, but he’s not sure he’s a grown up. He’s not sure he knows how. He’s not even sure he knows how to be in this new adult body with this half-teenage mind. His body doesn’t always feel like it belongs to him. It carries scars and damage from things he doesn’t remember unless he concentrates hard, and even then, it’s like a half forgotten dream. There are things that this body - his(?) body - knows to do that he never remembers training it to do, and fears that his body recognizes before his mind does. Maybe this thing, this one choice, means that his mind gets to own his body.  
The piercing itself is the sort of pleasantly painful that’s more about shock than about anything that’s really there. It’s less painful that the vaccines Jason knows he had as a baby but has had to go and get again in the past few years. Because apparently MMR doesn’t count if it happened before you died. The piercing hurts, but the hurt is drowned out by the strange weight in his earlobe which hangs there as he pays the man and signs the paperwork and gets the after care instructions.

Walking home, he thinks he likes that weight. It feels like owning this body.

It takes six weeks for the piercing to heal enough to change the earring. Jason tries to be careful with it during that time. He washes it with the hydrogen-peroxide alcohol solution and turns in and thus far, all of Dr Leslie’s dire predictions that an ear piercing would get infected and go into his brain and rot it, and Bruce’s slightly more realistic suggestions he would rip through his earlobe have proven untrue. 

He’s careful about it for a while afterward, though. He avoids wearing it when he has to appear at a Wayne family gathering (which really only happen for Christmas, Passover, Eid, Alfred’s Birthday, and Traffic Holiday). He avoids the Wayne Family Gatherings in general, and since most aren’t fixed dates, he can usually lie about forgetting about them. Except for Christmas, which he usually celebrates by playing ~~Robin~~ Red Hood cum Santa around some of the local group homes. Alfred’s birthday, though, is non-negotiable. Luckily, it was two weeks before his adventure in ear piercing and so it’s really not a conversation he needs to worry about for another year.

To be honest, he probably could have gotten away with keeping it hidden forever and letting it remain the kind of poorly kept secret that holds you grounded like a book between the mattress for reading late at night. He could have and he would have, except for the explosion at the docks.

He doesn’t work with the Bats that often. He’s patched into Oracle’s network, but he’s also pretty sure that if you pass through Gotham wearing a mask and you don’t… well, he’s not actually sure what the boundaries are because he’s crossed most of the boundaries that used to be there. If you cross Oracle’s physical boundaries but not her moral ones, you’ll be looped into her network, even if it’s as an occasional subcontractor. He’s at the docks for his own reasons, working the kind of case that fills him with the kind of righteous rage that becomes a purifying, sanctifying fire. 

The explosion throws him off course, though. Explosions have never been his favorite, even when he was the one setting them. There was a period after he came back that he was obsessed with blowing things up. It was also a period in which he was obsessed with setting things right by dying again. He’s a bit less suicidal now. He’s also way less comfortable with explosions. He wonders if the fuckers he’s dealing with know that, or that they just think an explosion will distract everyone enough to let them get their cargo onto the ships.

It doesn’t matter, because boom tears through Jason and freezes him in place, stretched out naked along the rooftop. The gravel digging into his palm is one of the only things keeping him grounded. That, and the pain inside his cheek where he’s bitten through. He swallows and wishes he could spit it out. But, he can’t unless he takes off his helmet. It’s not worth it.

Muffled words come through his com, and he’s not sure if it's because he’s turned it down or the explosion has blown out his ear drums. He finds a way to press the button, and Oracle’s voice rushes back in, asking him how he is and where he is. He manages to tell her he’s unhurt and they both ignore the fact that his vital signs might be lying about him being okay. 

Oracle sends him off to Batman, and he spends the next half an hour locating Batman. Who fortunately or unfortunately happens to be in the same place where the children Hood has been tracking ended up. He flips on his comm and goes to an Oracle-only channel to demand she get someone else here. Except there is no one else who can come. It’s just him and the children and a Batman who is struggling to stand.

Hood hauls the Batman to his feet, surprised once again at how close in size they are. His shoulder tucks comfortably under B’s and the older man’s weight settles against him in a way that makes pulling away all too hard. Despite the fact that Red Hood is holding him up, it feels like some strange parody of the hug Jason has been craving since before he died.

The two of them stand watch over the children. He props B against the wall under the watchful eye of a precocious seven year old while he goes and deals with a few of the stragglers from the trafficking ring. (Life pro rip from an ex-crime lord: if you’re going to blow shit up, make sure that you and your people are clear of the explosion. Or, better yet, hire someone with pyrotechnic expertise and not the kid who does Fourth of July fireworks and goons who won’t run away at the first sign of blue light. Not that any of these are lessons Red Hood has learned first hand.) Black Bat shows up just before Gotham PD and the social workers arrive on the scene. By this point, the precocious seven year old has kicked B in the shins and Jason is pretty sure that if he doesn’t separate her from his former mentor, he will end up with a new younger Bat-let very soon. And the Demon Brat won’t take kindly to being replaced. God knows, none of the rest of them have.

He’s half tempted to deposit B in the batmobile when Oracle informs him through the coms that he’s to bring Bruce back to the cave because he needs to get checked out, too. Black Bat has two small children attached to her like limpets. Hood is casually dismissive of most of the Bats when anyone asks about them, but no smart person dismisses Black Bat. She helps the chubby cheeked child in her arms raise her hand to give a small wave at Jason and B as they tumble into the Batmobile, and Jason drives them away.

The drive up to the manor is weirdly familiar, the car purring under his hands as he takes the sharp curves up to the cave entrance. He’s made this trip maybe ten times on his bike and probably a few hundred in his dreams. Except that now he fits comfortably into the driver’s seat and doesn’t have to adjust the mirrors. Not that he ever did in his dreams… although he knows that he was at least a foot shorter when he was asleep.

He and Alfred half carry B to a waiting gurney. Batman slowly falls away, replaced by a bruised Bruce. The running tights and black tank he wears as a baselayer under the kevlar are soaked through with what might be sweat and might be blood. “It’s only a flesh wound,” he half growls, still somewhere between Batman and Bruce.

“I ummm,” Hood rubs his helmet and moves toward the door. 

“Yeah, no,” Oracle’s voice echoes in his ear and through the speakers. “You vitals are still wonky, sit your ass down.” 

Alfred points to a gurney across from Bruce and Red Hood sinks down. He grabs a tray and starts removing the obvious guns, unloading them and placing them in front of him. He takes off his jacket, but leaves his helmet and his boots on.

“Helmet and boots off, too,” Alfred orders.

He shakes his helmet clad head. “I’ll keep it.” 

Alfred gives him the kind of disparaging look that demands why he thinks he’ll be attacked in the cave.

“For now,” Alfred agrees. “Alright, Master Bruce, bright light.”

Bruce growls and submits to the pupil dilation and the check of his mental acuity. He mostly accepts the grilling, except that when Alfred asks who the German Chancellor is, he whines that he likes Angie. And he’s mad she’s leaving. ...Which probably qualifies for more mental acuity than anything else. Although Bruce is sometimes better about name dropping. But, Alfred signs off on B’s mental acuity, hands him a hot pack and some bandages, and moves on to Jason. 

Jay winces a little as Alfred attaches the blood pressure cuff and it starts inflating. He has a bruise on his arm from… he’s not sure what. A something not that long ago. It’s not enjoyable to have it squeezed. He answers the questions as the hammer knocks his knee and it jumps. Never pleasant but always good. He knows his name and where he is, what day it is. Mostly. (Which is less about his mental state and more about the fact that he doesn’t really have a calendar to keep.)  
Most of his joints articulate correctly, except for the finger on his left hand that he jammed last week and the knuckles on his right where scar tissue has replaced bone. Alfred nods, and motions toward his head. 

He doesn’t want to take off his helmet. Not here. He doesn’t love the light shining in his eyes. Not because it hurts but because apparently his eyes get creepy when someone shines a light in them, and Tim once said off-handedly they kind of glow. He doesn’t want eyes that kind of glow. He doesn’t want to be reminded of the white streak in his hair. (The one he always toys with dying pink, but ends up with black hair dye because a pink streak would stand out.) He doesn’t want to see that Y-shaped scar that the Pit didn’t heal.

Robin wanders down from where he was grounded upstairs to offer Bruce an ice pack and interrogate him about the explosion. (Apparently Robin is failing US history, which wouldn’t be so much of a problem if he wasn’t such an asshole about the curriculum.) He stares at Jason. “How come he gets to keep his helmet on?” 

“Because he’s not a Bat,” Jason says. 

At the same time Alfred announces, “He doesn’t.” 

And then Jason doesn’t know how it happens, but the helmet is off and whichever Robin child this is (The Replacement? Damian? Why does Bruce have a penchant for dark haired orphans?) hands Alfred something that smells strongly of the medical grade adhesive remover they all use on their masks. 

Aftred does a double take when he sees it. Although that might also be the blood against his teeth. But, he continues going as if nothing has happened, holding out a water bottle so Jason can rinse his mouth after he’s explained that he bit his cheek and specified who the “fucky from Kentucky” is, because he forgot about Rand Paul. He is not impressed with Kentucky.

Robin is fussing with Bruce and heating pads when he crosses the cave and sees it.

“You’ve mained yourself, Todd.” The words are quick and harsh.

“What’s wrong?” Bruce tries to leap off the table, and then he falls back, a hand on his lower back and his face twisted in pain.

“What’s wrong with you?” Jason demands.

“You first!” 

“Todd pierced his ear,” Damian supplies.

Bruce swallows. “Back spasm. It’s an occasional occupational hazard after I broke it.” 

This… this does not make Jason feel better. 

“When did you get it done?” Bruce asks in a neutral voice that reminds Jason of the “about you get in trouble” voice.

His heart rate spikes, he can feel it pounding against his probably bruised ribs.

“I have to go.” His voice is hard and flat and leaves no room for argument.

“Jaylad,” Bruce grunts, tallying and then collapsing back against the gurney. 

Jason ignores him. He’s 19… 20… fuck all knows how old but too old for this. He grabs a backpack from the room, a spare pair of civvies and leaves on his boots. He high tails it to the manner, swearing at himself for riding in the Batmobile instead of taking his bike. He’ll just have to take an uber and come up with a convincing lie that doesn’t make it sound like he’s Bruce Wayne’s sugar baby. Which. No. Eww.

He feels his phone buzzing.

> Chat with [ **CASS** ]
> 
> Cass
>     🏍🦇🏡 lil bro

THere is a reason Cass is just about his favorite sibling in the history of his parental figure collecting stray children. He… fuck. He stalks back down to the cave, pulls back on his sweat stained uniform, throws the sweats in the backpack (which he’s keeping) and gets his bike from Black Bat. And then he high tails it out of the cave. It's not quite the dramatic exit he was envisioning, but it's far better than trying to lie his way home by taxi.

He avoids Bruce, and the rest of the Bats for a while. (Except Cass. Cass keeps sending him emojis and gifs and bad jokes. You can’t ignore someone that deadly who keeps sending you pictures of puppies. ...And okay, Barbara, but she sent him a copy of _The Thief_ which he knows means she approves.) He sticks to the Narrows and wipes out a drug ring selling to 11 year olds. He stops some low level burglaries, a mugging, and rescues a few pets from trees. 

And then he starts on the damn wage theft case. Jason grew up poor, he knows who the real criminals are. He gets himself a job at the company as a janitor, because everything else requires a fucking college degree and as much as he wants one, he doesn’t have one. Also because janitors see most things and know most things and no one appreciates the work they actually do. The whole fucking company would crumble without janitors and food service employees and administrative assistants just stopped showing up. 

He works weird hours. Being… doing… whatever the fuck this is has always meant weird, semi nocternal hours. This whole thing as a janitor is a whole other level of weird hours. He’s glad it’s fall, trending toward getting dark earlier. It means that the Hood can put in an appearance between seven and nine pm (never go out before 7) and then he can make it to work for the sleepy evening shift by 10. He cleans floors until 6ish, takes the ass crack bus back to somewhere and crashes, before picking up, taking the early afternoon bus up to the narrows and doing his own admin work. (If he’d realized how much accounting goes into being a drug lord, he might have paid better attention in algebra. Yes, he has accountants, but he doesn’t want them skimming the money he is skimming.

After a week, though, he just can’t take the bus ride all the way back to the Narrows. It’s six in the fucking morning. Hell, it’s 6:45 because his boss is a fucker and kept him late after he clocked out. (Which is part to why Jason is going there and doing this research because that’s wage theft but it still sucks when the sun is coming up and starting to give him an headache and he runs his fingers through is hair and realizes its growing out again, and all he wants to do is go home and read a book and unwind.) He presses the button before he realizes what he’s doing and his tired feet walk to an apartment his tired brain doesn’t remember that he has but apparently he does?

The loft is tiny and dusty, but there are clean sheets in the linen closet and a wrapped toothbrush and his brand of toothpaste by the sink and a few bags of that camomile tea Alfred used to make for him as a little boy in the cupboard.

It feels strange, but it has to be his. It unlocks with the alarms only he sets. And it has a gun safe tucked inside the stand alone closet (the closet has the bed, which he thinks is just ingenious.) He triple locks the door, sets the alarms, texts Barbara that he’s standing down, and goes to take a shower. He takes the mug of tea and pulls up a book on his phone, but he’s out before the sun starts demanding entry from behind the black out curtains. 

The next morning, okay afternoon, comes way too quickly. His body still wants far more than six hours of sleep. And he’s hungry. The problem with no longer being dead is that it takes a lot of energy to convince his body not to shut down. Not as bad as the speedsters, but a fair bit. He finds the instant bean soup and coffee packets in the kitchenette (he refuses to call a mini fridge, two burners, and a tea kettle a “kitchen”) and makes himself a sad something that looks like breakfast. He’ll pick up food on his way to his meeting. Damn accountants.

He goes to wash his face and brush his teeth again. He fumbles for dental floss that’s probably hidden in a bathroom drawer when his hand closes on a box. A jewellery box. He has no idea why it's here, but it's got his name on it. Which is Alice in Wonderland shit and everyone knows you probably shouldn't ingest the thing that says _Eat Me_ , but you can only die and come back to life once, right? (And if you can’t, he doesn’t want to know.) 

He pulls the box open, and picks up the note card. It’s small, white, and written in a very familiar hand. _Jaylad, Call me when you get this. B._ It’s his private number, the one he promised he’d answer day or night. And, underneath the note rests a single earring: a stud shaped like Batman’s logo.

Jason rolls his eyes, unsure how to deal with the fatherly love. He shoves the box and the note in his backpack, anyway, and sends Bruce a quick text.

That night, the Red Hood goes out in an earring he never expected to wear.

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by a conversation PennySparrow and I had _months_ ago about how the Batfam probably couldn't have piercings (as much as fan art might suggest) because it would mess with disguises and also really hurt to have your earring pulled out.) This is the result.
> 
> Questions, Comments, Concerns, Prompts, Suggestions, and Quarantine stories all welcome. Come say "hi!"


End file.
